And the great thing is that this technique helps even falling asleep in such situations for me. Its like imitating breathing, like you would be fully asleep and the real sleep follows.
You should be aware that this allows me to ignore and procrastinating on pressing issues which I should face head-on. But practicing meditation in the mornings helps with that.
It's almost like the old crock of "you only use 10% of your brain"... when I wake up, I'm on 10% mode, but programming thoughts spin up the whole engine.